Includes bibliographical references (pages 300-334) and index

Part I: Knowledge practices -- Gathering knowledges -- Analysing knowledges -- Disseminating knowledges -- Employing knowledges -- Part II: The price of progress -- Losing knowledges -- Dividing knowledges -- Part III: A social history in three dimensions -- Geographies of knowledge -- Sociologies of knowledge -- Chronologies of knowledge

"The book is divided into 3 parts. The first argues that activities which appear to be timeless - gathering knowledge, analysing, disseminating and employing it - are in fact time-bound and take different forms in different periods and places. The second part tries to counter the tendency to write a triumphalist history of the 'growth' of knowledge by discussing losses of knowledge and the price of specialization. The third part offers geographical, sociological and chronological overviews, contrasting the experience of centres and peripheries and arguing that each of the main trends of the period - professionalization, secularization, nationalization, democratization, etc, coexisted and interacted with its opposite."--Publisher

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